Ice skateboards having ice blades are well known in the prior art. On such skateboards, the ice blades typically are either directly attached to the board of the skateboard or mounted on the truck axles of the truck assembly of the skateboard in replacement of the roller wheels.
For such ice skateboards, free rotation of the blades, or blade runner assembly housing the blades, may be desirable to allow, among other things, the blade to swing freely and maintain the blade oriented downwardly towards the ground when the skateboard is raised or held above the ground. This downward orientation is especially useful should a user fall and the surface of the skateboard upon which the blades are connected be turned upwardly facing away from the ground. In such a situation, the blades turn inwardly towards the board for reducing risk of injury should the user fall on the skateboard. Such a feature may be particularly advantageous for novice users.
Maintaining completely free rotation of the runner assembly around an axis may nevertheless render the board unstable when sliding on an ice surface as the runner may rotate due to force applied thereupon and not engage the ice surface correctly. Thus, some users may desire that the free rotation of the blade be limited or restrained. One manner for achieving restraint or limitation of a runner assembly is use of a position stabilizing means, such as a biasing means which biases runner assembly, more specifically the body thereof, body toward a neutral position in which the blade is substantially parallel to the bottom board surface to which the runner assembly is connected and faces generally oppositely away therefrom. For users that do not wish to have such restrictions the biasing means may be selectively disconnected from the board of the skateboard or the body of the runner assembly for disengaging the biasing means.
Examples of ice skateboards, including skateboards having freely rotatable runner assemblies for the blades with position stabilizing means, such as biasing means, are disclosed in the following documents:                U.S. Pat. No. 6,311,990 issued on Nov. 6, 2001 to Sylvain Landry;        U.S. Pat. No. 4,114,913 issued on Sep. 19, 1978 to W. K. Newell et al.;        U.S. Pat. No. 4,165,091 issued on Aug. 21, 1979 to D. E. Chadwick;        U.S. Pat. No. 4,194,753 issued on Mar. 25, 1980 to D. Schrishuhn, Jr.;        U.S. Pat. No. 4,225,145 issued on Sep. 30, 1980 to R. K. Carr;        U.S. Pat. No. 4,521,029 issued on Jun. 4, 1985 to T. L. Mayes;        U.S. Pat. No. 4,896,893 issued on Jan. 30, 1990 to A. A. Shumays et al.; and        U.S. Pat. No. 5,161,810 issued on Nov. 10, 1992 to J. J. DeCesare.        
However, while some of these skateboards or runner assemblies have features such as biasing means that bias the blades or blade runners in the neutral position, they suffer from a number of drawbacks. For example, runner assemblies using such biasing means, and the biasing means themselves, are often difficult to install and cannot be easily retrofitted on existing skateboards. Further, such runner assemblies and biasing means may be mechanically complicated and fragile, especially when placed under extreme usage conditions or subjected to complex acrobatic maneuvers. The biasing means may be particularly susceptible to wear and tear during such maneuvers and when a non-blade portion of the runner assembly body, to which the biasing means may be connected, slides across a sliding surface, ice or otherwise.
Accordingly, there is a need for an improved blade runner assembly for an ice skateboard that has a biasing means that is easily and selectively connectable thereto and to the skateboard and which reduces wear on the biasing means.